New York Designers Behind CAALO Label Executes Conscious Luxury Outerwear For This Winter Season

Functionality and high quality of Japanese and Italian fabrics to produce their creations unite as New York-based design duo Chelsea and Jordan have taken their brand CAALO and provided us with a wide range of innovative luxury outerwear have to offer.

Influenced by their Canadian backgrounds, the design duo continues to show their focus and determination to use exceptional quality fabrics. Ensuring their design concepts is presented well, sustainability is represented on a conscious level and at the forefront of their brand.

The design duo presents us with a selection of ideas from their winter range this season and at the right time as the chill in the air gets colder. Merging two necessities – wool and down, that you will most likely wear in wintery climates, the design duo set out to deliver their consumers with a combination of the two in an elegant and trendy finish.

Take into account, each detail and finish are carefully curated and constructed sustainably. Using recycled nylon, suede, salvaged plastics and sustainable down that is RDS & OEKO-TEX certified.

Producing long-lasting comfortability and functional outerwear is one of the brand’s missions to achieve. Each item assembled in the best way possible, looking forward to accomplishing their goal by executing sustainable processes and contributing to the cause of protecting the environment.

Gathering more insight into the brand, we at New Wave Magazine provide the design duo with a few questions about their impressive label, their creative vision and the inspiration behind their luxury design creations.

1. How has your upbringing influenced you to build your line of luxury outerwear?

[Chelsea] I grew up on the west coast of Canada and spent a lot of my youth in the mountains hiking and snowboarding. After moving to New York, I noticed people were either wearing technical coats like what I wore on the mountain back home, or chic wool coats that they had to layer a down vest and sweaters underneath to stay warm. After designing in NYC for almost 10 years, I decided, if I cannot find something that marries function and luxury here, I should try to create it.

2. How did the journey of CAALO begin, did you feel you wanted to produce an outerwear more suitable to the weather in Vancouver?

[Chelsea] We know most people do not have an endless amount of money to buy a new coat each season so we wanted to create pieces that could be worn multiple ways and for multiple seasons. All our pieces are either reversible or transformable so they can be worn at least two or more ways giving the wearer more flexibility in how they want to style and wear the piece. Everything also has a unisex fit so pieces can be shared between partners.

3. What does it mean to own a multi-functional garment at CAALO?

[Jordan] For us, multi-functional means one hanger in your closet giving you a whole myriad of stylistic and functional solutions. It also means less consumption and waste. We are firm believers in the ‘less but better’ philosophy, so we design our pieces with options like true reversibility, convertible hem lengths and making it easy to add / remove belts, hoods and sleeves.

4. From a design perspective, do you feel you are constantly always full of ideas in making the next look unique than the last?

[Chelsea] That is a good question. Sure, we have hundreds of ideas at any given moment, but we really try to focus our designs and make sure everything we design stands up to our three core beliefs. Is it highly functional? Is this something that both materially and aesthetically will stand the test of time and be net positive to the planet? Does it feel special every time you put it on? We strive to make things better and different than what is already out there, and that applies to constantly improving on what we have done in the past.

5. Using high quality Italian and Japanese fabrics, is your garments more durable to last longer?

[Jordan] It has to last a long time, there is no other option for us. We put a lot of effort into choosing high quality fabrics and construction techniques that ensure you can hand down your CAALO piece to a niece, son, a friend and keep it out of landfills. We try to pay homage to the traditional definition of luxury. Our product is built well from the highest quality materials and is designed thoughtfully.

6. Is there a piece in the collection that stands out or a favourite of yours?

[Jordan] The one we see out on the street! lol. I live in my down trench coat that we came out with a couple seasons ago and still sell to this day. It is both super lightweight and warm but drapes just like a traditional trench thanks to our super low-profile sustainable warm down. Not to sound like a proud dad, but I do not think there has been a time I have worn it out that I have not had a stranger come up to me on the street and tell me “That’s a really nice coat.”

7. Using various construction techniques to create your line, do you feel these techniques have benefitted your brand and the environment efficiently?

[Chelsea] We spend a lot of time and pay a significant premium in production costs to do everything in our power to be more sustainable and have a net-positive effect on the environment. This is everything from designing things to last both in construction and aesthetic, to paying living wages to our factory workers, working with sustainable factories and choosing eco, recycled fabrics. But we are also not naïve. We are a small brand, and we do not have access to some of the things larger brands do. We try to focus our attention on what matters the most and continually improve on our efforts each season.

8. Going forward, will you be using or experimenting with any other sustainable fabrics that are more environmentally friendly?

[Jordan] Forever experimenting! I am really excited for the world of bio-fabricated materials (and food) to take off. I have been hounding this one company for years to let us try their materials, but the reality is, the industry is still very much in its infancy. We love material sciences. The down we use is incredibly warm and is RDS certified sustainable Down and a by-product of the food industry. Every season we try to add more eco, recycled fabrics to the line.

9. Did you feel there was a gap in the market amongst brands that was not offering enough options for sustainable winter essentials?

[Chelsea] That is actually, why we started CAALO in the first place. We kept looking for a coat that was functional, beautiful and ethically and sustainably produced. It just did not exist. It is exciting to see more and more brands switching their focus to be more sustainable. I think there is a lot of positive change that is going to happen in the industry in the next 10 years.

10. In this current COVID climate, have there been difficult challenges you have faced to source the fabrics you need?

[Chelsea] Logistically it has become slightly more challenging and more expensive overall, but we are lucky enough to have great partners that we work with that we can turn to.

11. In the future, will you be adding more product categories such as winter accessories like scarves, hats and gloves/mittens?

[Jordan] We actually used the scraps from our coats last season to make down bucket hats and toques for our look book. We did not intend to sell them, but we have had a lot of requests for them. It is on the list for this season, but I think we need to either clone ourselves or get some extra help to execute all our ideas. If you are a fashion designer in NYC, let us know!

12. One of the eco fabrics used, a recycled polyester fabric, do you roughly know how many plastic water bottles recovered goes into one of your pieces?

[Jordan] We actually use a number of recycled fabrics. Because each has a different weight / thickness and composition it depends, but it is about 15 1.5 litre plastic bottles for one of our long coats.

13. Would you say your brand appeals to creating functional and comfortability than focusing on trends of the season?

[Chelsea] And timeless aesthetic, yes. We explicitly avoid designs that we feel are fleeting trends. We always look at classic silhouettes and think, “how could we improve on this with today’s technology, and what fabric or colour combinations will make it new and interesting”?

To see more styles, take a glimpse at the following CAALO website https://caalo.studio/ and brand video below:

Words by Charlene Foreman.